Roma Women and Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Roma women are routinely portrayed as submissive, passive agents uninterested in their own or their children's education. This article reframes that representation as an expression of gendered antigypsyism: a historically rooted racism that, in education, operates through deficit-based framings and the depoliticisation of structural inequality. Addressing a gap in the literature on Roma feminism, antigypsyism and education during the Covid-19 pandemic, the study documents the feminist action Roma women took to sustain their communities' and their own education during lockdown. Following the communicative methodology, it draws on 9 focus groups and 34 life stories with 54 Roma women and 24 Roma men from three Spanish regions (Catalonia, Aragon and the Basque Country), together with interviews with 40 professionals from education, social services and civic organisations. The findings show how institutional antigypsyism shaped families' experiences and how the women most connected to schools became agents of transformation: advocating for their children's schooling, building feminist solidarity networks, and resuming their own studies. Rather than reading this agency as proof that the system worked, the article argues that naming antigypsyism keeps the structural critique of educational inequality in view.